Lay Me Down to Sleep
by blinkblink
Summary: He’s been burning to meet the FoxHound legend, like fat in a grease fire, insides hot and sizzling so high he wonders there’s not steam coming out his mouth. A first conversation under fire. Pre MG.


Disclaimer: Yeah, no owning, you know the drill.

The first thing Fox says to him is, "Fuck, kid, put out the lighter. Wanna get your head blown off?"

He's been burning to meet the FoxHound legend, like fat in a grease fire, insides hot and sizzling so high he wonders there's not steam coming out his mouth. At the order to rendezvous with the elite operative, the fire spread quick as flame on gasoline to his nerves, leaving him anxious and jumpy. Hence the cigarette. The cigarette he's now grinding under the thick sole of his boot into the ground. A second later and he's hunkering in the hole next to the man, down deep in the bottom of the foxhole – he doesn't grin – fingers white and almost steady on the warm steel of his FA-MAS.

"You gotta light up out here, you do it out of enemy sight," continues the soldier, voice hard but not reproving. In the poor orange light of distantly burning jungle, Snake sees one eye glint with something a couple gears down from amusement. Vague entertainment, quite possibly in the simple break in the soldier's routine. Fox pulls out a cig of his own, whipping it from a pocket of his dusty flack jacket like a magician, and a dented silver lighter along with it. With a wink, he flips open the lighter's cover, and then the world is all contained in that bright flickering flame.

It mesmerizes Snake, the tiny blue breath framing a centre so hot as to be invisible, tipped at the edges with orange which bleeds into red and disappears. A full scale of nothing to nothing, with a bright burst of colour in the middle. The entirety of life right there, a bird flying through a shaft of light.

The flame goes out with a click, and the world is black. It's anything but silent, though, filled with the distant crackling of the fire like radio static turned down low, the muttering and crackling of night creatures, and the high whine of mosquitoes around his ears. He almost startles at the older soldier's voice so near his ear, low and rough as grit.

"I'll give you another tip, kid. You gonna light up in the dark, close your eyes. Sure they told you not to stare at lights in basic? Same applies for your lighter. You'll loose your night-vision in a snap." Fox flicks the lighter open and closed with a whicker-click noise. The end of his cigarette burns a bright Miami sunset-red, lighting the sharp lines of his face. His eyes are closed, but Snake doesn't feel any give in his attention. It's strong and sharp as a line of barbed wire. Snake wonders how much he even thinks about death anymore, how much of his survival instincts and his skills are employed with an active fear, and how much of it is now so ingrained as to be thoughtless.

"Snake, huh?" says Fox eventually. It's not the first time they've met face to face, not even the first time they've met to talk to. FoxHound's a small group, and although some of the elites are uptight bastards who think their light's too holy to bestow on the unworthy, Fox has been around, met the rookies. Just so the sheen of adoration wears thin enough that they'll take orders from him under pressure rather than freeze and stare. The rookies are greener than weeds, and almost as numerous, and Snake's aware that no one with rank would spend time with them if they didn't have to. Hell, he wouldn't, if he didn't have to. Fox's efforts on their behalf, cursory as they were, earn him marks, and Snake considers himself a damn stingy miser when it comes to giving them out.

"Yes sir," says Snake, regulation crisp, his recent turn-out from the Academy having left him starched and creased.  

"Interesting name." He tilts his head slightly, and even closed-lidded his eyes seem to be staring at Snake. It's disturbingly corpselike.

"I didn't choose it, sir." It had been assigned to him, by Big Boss. Some day, if he earns it he might rise up the ranks. Might even become a fox himself.

"Didn't you?" drawls Fox with lazy sarcasm; he knows perfectly well where the names come from. The same desk where the orders are birthed, the ones which sent him out here into this smoking jungle. Rebels behind them, Commies in front, and a hell of a lot of artillery sitting less than a click away as a prize to whoever gets there first. A team is already in with it, dismantling everything bigger than an assault rifle, and setting charges to take care of the rest. All they have to do is hold off any early arrivals, assuming they don't catch malaria first. Snake slaps a mosquito on his neck before freezing, waiting to see if a reproof is forthcoming. It isn't.

Snake is both too conscious of his status as a rookie and too confident in his own assessment to ask the older soldier's opinion of the situation. But at the first bark of gunfire from the trees ahead of them he jacks his rifle into his shoulder, turning against the rough dirt wall of the dugout to face that direction. His finger itches towards the safety.

Fox gives a quiet snort, the bright tip of his cigarette wagging up and down once in the darkness like a dying sparkler. It describes a burning trail through the air.

"Soften up your trigger-finger. They're far out yet."

Snake does as he's told, eases his finger away from the smooth moulded metal of the trigger, the gun made to fit against him just as sweetly as any woman. In the heat of the jungle, it's warm in his hands, slightly damp from the humidity, a living thing.

"Then what're they shooting at?" It slips out before he can stop it, and his only consolation is that at least his voice doesn't shake.

Fox gives him a death-head grin. "You think we're the only ones with rookies on their hands? Bet half their rifles have the safety rusted clean off."

Snake tries not to grimace, to imagine the kind of damage even FoxHound's new recruits, supposedly the best of the best, would do hiking through a jungle carrying semi-autos with no safeties. He himself is not included in his imagined bloodbath; the idea that he would mishandle a weapon does not occur. The fact that the men out there, or at least some of them, are unable to properly handle their weapons should relieve him. It doesn't. Instead it puts him further on edge.

Another couple of rounds strife through the forest. They sound no closer to Snake's rattling ears, but he twitches back into the moist earth all the same, roots brushing over his shoulder.

Fox takes a last draw on the cigarette, then flicks it away past his feet. It cuts red circles out of the air before coming to rest on the damp ground, where it goes out with a hiss and a puff of white smoke. The soldier opens his eyes. In the darkness, all there is to see are two straight slivers of orange, firelight reflected.

"First firefight, kid?" Fox's voice is lazy, a man only vaguely more interested in the conversation he's starting in order to kill time than in the time he's killing.

"No, sir," replies Snake, unable to keep the slight irritation at such a predictable conversation out of his voice. "First time sandwiched between Reds and radicals carrying irregular weapons, sir."

Fox actually laughs at this, a short barking guffaw not unlike that of his namesake. "No prayers, then?"

"Don't know any, sir." The wave of emotion which floats the thought _God let me make it through this_ doesn't count, not in Snake's books. Snake knows plenty of soldiers carry religion around in their pockets like a lucky penny, ready to bring out and wish upon in necessity, but he disdains it. He has, he tells himself, seen too much to believe in God, and not enough to hold the door open for luck.

"None?"

"Only the one for kids, sir." It lies overgrown in the untidy garden of his childhood memories, a stone long since buried under thick weeds. Like so many memories from his early years, he has forgotten its origins.

"Which one's that, kid?" It doesn't seem to Snake that Fox is mocking him; the older soldier's tone is distracted. There's a quiet shuffling as he shifts position on the dirt floor.

"Now I lay me down to sleep, sir," grits out Snake uncomfortably, not keen on any of the possible directions this conversation could take.

"'And if I should die before I wake, I pray the lord my soul to take'?" Fox turns as he quotes, fire flickering once more in his eyes. "Bit morbid, isn't it? And do you?"

"No, sir." Snake's answer is immediate, would have been even if he hadn't seen the question coming a mile away.

Something clicks quietly; Gray Fox checking the chamber of his rifle. He's backed up against the opposite side of the foxhole from Snake, and the orange light plays over the barrel of his own FA-MAS like sunlight on water. "Don't be so quick to throw away your soul, kid. That's something that can come back to haunt you."

Snake blinks at this unexpected statement, and the straightforward way Fox lays it out. "What, do you – pray, sir?" He stumbles over the word, disbelief tripping up his tongue.

"Not for me, not for anyone. But I keep hold of an ounce of hope for my soul." In a flash the streak of orange which is the barrel of Fox's gun disappears, and as if to replace it comes the bark of the FA-MAS. A couple of feet over Snake's head there's a heavy thud. As Snake scrambles to aim into the dark space over Fox's head, he catches a flicker of light on the white enamel of Fox's teeth as the soldier grins. "Might be something there, after all."

And then the night is too busy for conversation.


End file.
